I’ve just started watching Brooklyn Nine Nine, and I’m begining to think that Rosa Diaz is a grown-up Sal. Leather jacket, motorcycle, went to Catholic school, tough as nails and scary as hell, nice person deep down.

Wrong accent and ethnicity, of course, but it’s been established that Rosa lies about her past and may not even be using her real name, so maybe she suppressed the accent and passed off her “caramelness” as Hispanic.

Just put it really far in the background.
Or be a badass who doesn’t mind getting a little wet. Batman’s outfit probably makes rain a lot easier to tolerate; the mask alone wards off waterlogged eyebrows.

And at the risk of beating a dead horse, Amber does not suffer from clinical dissociation. The confusion is that she does engage in a willfull “dissociation” and it *is* a way to deal with emotional problems AND it is a responce to past trauma. The essentual difference is that instead of being something that involentarily happens to her, it’s something she has to actively work at. Everything considered, she makes it work surprisingly well. But Amber and Amazigirl are not really seperate people however comforting it is to Amber to pretend otherwise.

It’s unclear.Several commentators with experience have spoken to how familiar it seems.
There have been times when the switch to Amazi-Girl seemed instant and not deliberate – the recent times when Amber has come across Sal especially. What does seem clear is that whatever level of “dissociation” she does have it appears to be increasing. It’s much less pretense than it was at first. Her reactions are different – again most obviously, A-G doesn’t have the panic reaction to Sal that Amber’s shown again and again.

I’m not a psychiatrist and thus not qualified to diagnose her. Even if I was, it would be malpractice to diagnose her without actually examining her.

It’s worth remembering that Amber/AG is partially there so that Willis can have fun writing about a superhero? I mean, I know the nerd way is to analyse the crap out of fictional characters, but I seriously feel like people take the Ambernalysis a few steps beyond the level on which she is actually written.

Like, people don’t recognize her because she wears a mask and messes up her hair. This is a foolproof disguise in this world. It had duped really clever, observant people who know her well, and also Danny.

I would be surprised if Amber constitutes a careful examination of the concept of personality disassociation. It would kinda get in the way of having fun with AG beating up muggers.

Harsh reality getting in the way of cool, familiar tropes sounds like a pretty good descriptor of Dumbing of Age. Hell, Harsh Reality Getting in the Way of Cool, Familiar Tropes (HRGitWoCFT) would be a better NAME than Dumbing of Age.

There’s definitely some of that. And that’s why I expect that however the AG plot resolves, we’ll still have an AmaziGirl for Willis to play superhero with.

That said, he’s definitely playing with trauma and disassociation as well. We’re really pretty far away from “having fun with AG beating up muggers” and have been ever since she beat Blaine into the ground.

I’m not sure what’s kicking around in Sal’s head here – could be she’s missing Marcie and talking about last night reminded her of it, or she’s feeling bad about using the app, or heck maybe she’s sad for AG because of what you’ve suggested. It could also be some sort of ‘I don’t deserve that kind of power because I am reckless/angry/an idiot’ etc. type thing.

There’s a lot of things I can see this being, but I can’t quite pin down anything on her here.

I think she’s realizing that she misjudged AG a bit. I mean, justifiably, because AG was far from her best around Sal, but Sal knows maybe better than anybody in the cast how pesky emotions can make a person be less than the best possible version of themselves.

You mean despite huge load of power she had over you already? In all honesty this is turning out like I thought it would, the only way Amber would get past the scorn and bitterness she has for Sal is if she found a Outlet for it and one way she could have found it is through short term confrontation or this. I wonder if Sal will do the same thing for Amber/Amazi-girl that Marcie did for her all these years.

Reasonably I think this is a better solution, to be honest just like anyone I would have thought seeing the two butt heads would have been…interesting, but I still haft to listen to my more rational side. Guess AG vs Sal will just haft to be a dream match that will never be.

Well, now, grudging respect doesn’t mean they’ll never ever fight again. Especially since Sal still has her issues with AG (escalation, haring off without a plan) and AG still has unresolved issues with Sal, whether she’ll admit it or not before shunting them off to Amber. And, y’know, Sal still helped traumatize Amber and AG still stabbed, stalked, and harassed Sal.

I don’t think this will be as chummy a friendship as people seem to suspect. At best, I can see them being friends but still arguing a bunch because they think very differently.

The thing is that I suspect that Sal feels ‘having power’ over Amazi-Girl is to be playing the game by Amazi-Girl’s rules, something that she doesn’t want to do. That said… I’m not usre that she doesn’t want to play the game at all. 😉

Now, just out of interest, who else was Amazi-Girl expecting to meet up there?

Maybe not quite so much the spandex, but being able to confront people who unrepentantly, knowingly, and intentionally shit on other people and would otherwise get away with it and knock their teeth down their throats?

I’m still expecting a story arc that concludes with the college news website showing a poor-resolution CCTV image of Amazi-Girl and Sal beating on some thugs in a store. The headline reads “Amazi-Girl and The Spyder Foil Convenience Store Hold-Up!” with another article underneath titled: “Why The World Needs Heroes” by Dorothy Keener.

I don’t think she knows. I don’t think she recognised Amber – as she already met her a few times and during these times it did not seem for her that she remembered anything, likehttp://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/03-when-god-closes-the-door/her-physicality/
I think she did not connect things – yet. Also, she met Amber only a few times, but ran into Amazi-Girl a bunch of times, so I think it’s not surprising for her to
first: not recognise Amber being Amazi-Girl and
second: to not realise that she and Amazi-Girl/Amber share a past.
I think it’s because the assault/raid she did in the past wasn’t traumatising to her – at least not to the extent it was to Amber. She probably just remembers someone attacked her back and it got her into jail (or youth penitentiary? – something like that), but can’t remember the face of said person.

Yeah, I’m pretty sure Sal barely remembers anything about the person that stabbed her hand. She’s not really the sort to hold on to trauma like that, and it doesn’t look like she really got that good a look at her anyway. Remember Amber hid during the robbery, so from Sal’s perspective, some person she barely-if-ever saw came from behind her and stabbed her hand. She went from “Who-” to “AGGHSFXXKGLE@#%@!!#@!” in like a half a second.

Panel one: Oh, Amazi-Girl. She looks like she’s been up here thinking for a while. She seems to like finding high places to come and think. And it’s not like the past few days haven’t been extremely rough on her, so she has a lot to think about. Danny, Ryan, Sal, etc. And obviously about herself. Her shifting so much blame on AG worries me, it really does. This will probably get worse before it gets better.

Panel two: Surprise Sal! Fun times. Can I just say here Sal looks very pretty in this strip? Like, she usually does, but particularly so here imo.

On to meat – Sal, considering you are one of the most aloof people in the strip, this is fun to hear you bring this up. Though admittedly she’s not trying to look superhero badass while she does so. I think she’s still seeing somewhat how she’s feeling. They do have quite a bit in common, at least from when Sal was younger.

And of course some of it is just her making fun of AG again. Sal is never not going to make fun of AG. AG is constantly straddling the line between ridiculous and badass.

Who were you thinking it’d be AG? Walky? Danny maybe? Dorothy? Interesting. Though I notice she took Sal surprising her a lot better than I thought she might have. She really seems to be building on that grudging working respect from last night. I’m back and forth on whether I want these two to be friends, but they’re definitely making improvements.

Panel three: AG looks far more annoyed in this panel! I’m not sure it’s because she used the app or because she had to give her the app in the first place. Possibly a bit of both.

And Sal’s comment…yeah. Considering how AG has been acting around her, I’d be shocked she let her have that on her phone period, even if it were to stop Ryan. It’s not the kind of thing you’d expect…

Panel four: Hence Sal’s comment here. AG has been showing that, while she is prone to escalation and haring off with no plan and potentially making bad situations worse, she really does have the intentions of helping stop criminals and protecting people. I think Sal can relate to those motives – that’s why she ended up whooping Leland’s ass. So, yeah, AG IS showing her a different side of herself. The side people who weren’t Sal got to see before. And this could be a good thing for their relationship but it might actually not be good in general – if Sal starts thinking she may have been wrong, A) She and Danny are going to have some serious disagreements in their future and B) It will keep the person who was the most invested in stopping AG before she hurts or kills someone (or herself) from seeing if she is on a downward slide. If she starts doubting whether AG is really as bad as she thought, this could end VERY dangerously for AG. Nobody wants that. And potentially bad for Sal too, since the law is much less kind to black folks than white ones.

I’m 99% sure that’s why Sal is looking sad – she’s seeing a new, more sympathetic side of AG who clearly thinks the worst of herself. I think she can relate.

Panel five: Oooooh, this one is fun! There are a few reasons to ditch that app:

1) Worst comes to worst, nobody can prove she had it (at least, not easily)

2) Power comes with responsibility – Sal won’t be her babysitter.

3) …Again, I think Sal is starting to get a view of where AG is coming from and she knows she wouldn’t want someone able to tail HER when she was in a bad place, so she’s doing AG a solid. More of that grudging working respect that is both so good to see and potentially very dangerous. I like this panel.

4) Sal’s had enough of people trying to control her over her time, and she doesn’t want to be the one to control folks.

AG looks both sad and kind of confused here – much as Sal doesn’t know the whole story for AG, AG doesn’t know the whole of Sal. She only knows her as the robbery girl and the girl who was justifiably pissed she stalked but helped her anyways catch Ryan. A girl like that would have justifiable reasons to want power over her – but Sal doesn’t. There’s a lot more to Sal than she knows. It’s both confusing for her and it makes her kind of sad because she wanted this to be a ‘I paid a debt’ thing for stalking Sal. She definitely wants to be the good guy all the time, but AG can’t because she is human and flawed and CAN’T always be the good guy, nobody can. It’s one thing AG needs to work on.

I’m joking about AG. People have been calling Sal her sidekick for a while and considering how shitty AG was to Sal up until the hunt for Ryan started, it grossed me out. I now call AG Sal’s sidekick because

– She’s the one always saving AG (AG is the sidekick in distress)
– She’s got her own vehicle and is therefore more independent (traditionally the hero’s part)
And
– She’s usually the one to talk AG down from something silly. Again, traditionally hero’s part.

Yeah, Sal and Amazi-girl are getting closer to each other ever so slowly. Both unable and unwilling to let too much of the other person into their heads. Neither of them wants to play by the other’s rules. But still they are slowly getting closer.